Carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks are frequently flavored using essential oils and essential oil extracts of a lipophilic nature. These materials are insoluble or poorly soluble in water, and generally have specific gravities less than that of water. These properties make it difficult to incorporate essential oils and essential oil extracts into beverages. In order to prepare a beverage using one or more flavoring oils, it is necessary that these oils be in the form of aqueous emulsions. Typically, a water-soluble material such as gum acacia, a modified starch, or carboxymethylcellulose, is employed to form an emulsion with the flavoring oils. The emulsification of the flavoring oil and water-soluble material can be accomplished by means of an homogenizer, colloid mill, turbine-type agitator, or any other apparatus which are well known in the art. During the emulsification the water-insoluble flavoring is broken up into very small particles with diameters of about 0.1 to about 3.0 microns. The gum coats the particularized oil to aid in preventing coalescence and maintaining an appropriate dispersion.
With time, the flavor emulsion, even if finely dispersed, can separate from the beverage and form an oil ring or slick at the top of the container. The conventional solution to this problem is to mix the flavor emulsion with a weighting oil, usually a brominated vegetable oil, to adjust the specific gravity of the emulsion. The brominated vegetable oil is a vegetable oil which has been halogenated and has a high specific gravity. The weighting oil is mixed with the flavor emulsion in appropriate small proportions to provide a mixture having a specific gravity greater than that of the flavor emulsion, and approximately equal to that of the beverage. The weighting oil thereby prevents migration of emulsion particles to the surface of the beverage. The specific gravities of the beverage and the mixture of weighting oil and flavor emulsion are not required to be equal to be functional. The exact specific gravity or balancing point is determined by the soft drink formula. The resulting mixture of flavor emulsion and weighting oil, when finely dispersed, is sufficiently stable to avoid separation from the beverage by migration to the beverage surface or sedimentation over the foreseeable lifetime of the product.
Substitutes for brominated vegetable oils as weighting oils have been sought for several years. U.S. Pat. No. 4,093,750, issued June 6, 1978 to Babayan, discloses the use of a polyglycerol ester of a fatty acid as a replacement for brominated vegetable oil.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,600,186, issued Aug. 17, 1971 to Mattson and Volpenhein, describes non-absorbable low calorie food compositions produced by replacing at least a portion of the fat content of a conventional food with a sugar fatty acid ester or sugar alcohol fatty acid ester having at least four fatty acid ester groups, with each fatty acid having from 8 to 22 carbon atoms. That patent discloses the discovery that certain fatty acid ester compounds having at least 4 fatty acid ester groups have the physical properties of ordinary triglyceride fats but are not digested or absorbed to the same extent when eaten. Data in the patent indicate that these materials are sparingly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, particularly when they comprise 10% or less of the total dietary fats consumed. U.S. Pat. No. 3,963,699, issued June 15, 1976 to Rizzi and Taylor, describes a solvent-free transesterification synthesis of higher polyol fatty acid polyesters. U.S. Pat. No. 4,334,061, issued June 8, 1982 to Bossier III, discloses an improved recovery process for polyol fatty acid polyesters. U.S. Pat. No. 4,005,196, issued Jan. 25, 1977 to Jandacek and Mattson, observes that polyol fatty acid polyesters and triglycerides are miscible. When both are present, a single oil phase is formed.
It has now been found that bromination of these fatty acid ester compounds does not affect their absorption properties, solubility, viscosity, or flavor. Thus the brominated fatty acid ester compounds can be used as weighting oils in beverages or in flavors with substantially no absorption of bromine by the consumer.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide brominated polyol fatty acid polyester compounds that are safe for use in foods for human consumption.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide brominated polyol fatty acid polyester compounds that are safe for use in beverage weighting oils.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide effective soft drink weighting oils comprising flavor oils or emulsions and substantially non-absorbable brominated polyol fatty acid polyester oils.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide flavors, beverage concentrates, carbonated beverages, and noncarbonated beverages containing substantially non-absorbable brominated polyol fatty acid polyester oils.
These and other objects of the invention will be obvious from the following descriptions and examples.